


you and I both know that the ghost is me

by skeilig



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Angst, Bottom Richie Tozier, Canon-Eddie stays dead though, Comeplay, Crossing Timelines, Felching, First Time Bottoming, Fix-It of Sorts, Getting Dicked Down Is Part Of The Grieving Process, M/M, Richie Eats His Own Ass, Richie Tozier Cries During Sex, The Turtle CAN Help Us (IT), Threesome - M/M/M, Time Travel, Top Eddie Kaspbrak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:22:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27420382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skeilig/pseuds/skeilig
Summary: “Richie,” Eddie starts, and they both look to him. He fidgets in discomfort. “Okay, for the sake, of, um… clarity. What if we callyouRich–” he points to other-Richie, his-Richie, before turning his gaze back, “andyou, Richie.”Both Richies nod.“Okay, Richie,” Eddie says. “What’s the last thing you remember, before you woke up?”Or: canon-Richie wakes up in a fix-it verse. He has sex with himself and Eddie, but in, like, a healing way.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier/Richie Tozier, Richie Tozier/Richie Tozier
Comments: 52
Kudos: 240





	you and I both know that the ghost is me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [liesmyth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/liesmyth/gifts).



> Me: I should contribute to the RCU (richiecest cinematic universe) just for fun.  
> Me: I have written 10k of absolute tonal whiplash. 
> 
> Title is from [Shakey Graves and Esme Patterson’s Dearly Departed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3jk3pflofk&ab_channel=Pandora) because I love metaphorical ghost songs.
> 
> \+ Not to make this fic sound more batshit than it already is but. Ugh. So it’s also set in real-to-life spring 2020 and thus makes brief reference to current events. Consider yourself warned.

When Richie opens his eyes, he’s home. 

He slowly blinks. His eyes are crusty, dry; his eyelids stick. It’s his bedroom in L.A. He recognizes the plain white ceiling, the dusty blades of the fan. He feels hungover, a little nauseous. He rubs his eyes with the back of his hand and sniffs. His sinuses are fucked. He’s definitely hungover.

Then he hears a vaguely familiar voice say, “Oh, shit, he’s awake.” 

It sounds like, well… It sounds like himself, but flat, nasally, without the timbre of vibrations in his own head, the base notes in his chest. It’s like hearing his own voice on a recording, an experience with which he is all too familiar. After years of comedy and interviews and voiceover work, he’s become totally immune to the cringe of hearing his own voice played back. He has not, however, heard his voice quite like this. 

That is to say, in the same room, but not coming from a recording or from his own throat. 

He blinks and turns his head—he’s not wearing his glasses so everything is fuzzy—and comes nose-to-nose with…

Himself? 

It’s himself, and Eddie, hovering above him; Richie grabs Eddie’s forearm, half in front of him, defensive in his stance. Eddie grips him back. They shuffle around, as if unable to decide who’s protecting who, and they look seriously freaked out. 

Richie lingers in his haze of confusion for another long moment before he starts to freak out. 

“What the _fuck?_ ” He scrambles up in bed, heart pounding, and his sudden movement causes the two to yelp and grab at each other in panic, jumping back. “I can’t fucking _see_ ,” he says, kicking at the sheets, and truly freaking out, because there are intruders, and he knows they probably aren’t himself and Eddie—both impossible, because he’s himself and Eddie is… Eddie is… 

“Get his glasses, his glasses,” maybe-Eddie says—it does _sound_ like Eddie—and he’s patting other-Richie’s shoulder. 

“He doesn’t _have_ glasses,” other-Richie says, his hands waving around. Then he stops, pauses, and removes the glasses from his own face. He offers them to Richie, where he sits on the bed. “Here, take these. Just– calm the fuck down.” 

Richie snatches the glasses—they’re different from his own, leaner, with lighter lines—and shoves them on his face. The prescription is right and the world comes suddenly into focus. 

Richie, other-Richie, _himself_ , looks mostly the same. He has shorter hair, more gray at the temples. His eyes are unfocused now that he’s the one who can’t see; his squint means that his mouth is pinched, brow furrowed. His face looks a little bit backward, not like his own face does in the mirror, but it’s him, unmistakable. 

And Eddie. Eddie is Eddie, unmistakable. He looks like he did in Derry— _when? only a week ago? didn’t Richie fall asleep last night, in Derry, on Mike’s pull-out couch? things are starting to come back to him, and he’s not sure how he got here, to L.A._ —but he looks older, maybe a couple years older. He looks better, too. His shoulders are more relaxed, and he has some nice scruff on his face. There’s a pale healed-over scar on his right cheek, where he was bandaged when they went to the sewers, the last time Richie saw him. 

They’re both holding their hands up, as if approaching a wild animal. _Don’t attack. We’re not threatening you._

Richie clears his throat, finds his voice. “Um. What are you doing in my house?”

Other-Richie frowns. “This is _our_ house.” 

Richie throws up all over the bed. 

Later, after they’ve stripped the sheets—it took some time, because other-Richie was trying to help but he kept gagging, until Eddie forced him to leave the bedroom—and after Richie has showered and dressed in some clothes that are his-but-not-his, he’s sitting at the kitchen table. 

They gave him a blanket to wrap himself in, which was a nice gesture. It’s not cold or anything, but it’s more of a shock-blanket thing, perhaps, so Richie sits cocooned in a knit afghan. They found him an old pair of glasses to wear, and they’re the same ones that Richie is familiar with: black plastic frames. The lenses are scratched to shit. It’s comforting to have them back. 

He’s seen enough of the house now to know that it’s also his-but-not-his. It’s the same architecture, the same walls, but it’s warmer and homier. It’s _their_ home, just as other-Richie said. He shares it with Eddie. The closet is filled with both their clothes, mixed together. Their photos hang on the walls, including—in a vision that makes Richie’s throat constrict—wedding photos. 

Some of the furniture has been replaced, too. The kitchen table is different. He stares at the smooth dark wood surface, completely and unfamiliarly free of water-rings. He pulls the blanket tighter around his shoulders. 

“Richie,” Eddie starts, and they both look to him. He fidgets in discomfort. “Okay, for the sake of, um… clarity, what if we call _you_ Rich–” he points to other-Richie, his-Richie, before turning his gaze back, “and _you_ , Richie.” 

Both Richies nod. 

“Okay, Richie,” Eddie says. “What’s the last thing you remember, before you woke up?” 

Richie tries to think. It’s coming back to him, slowly. “I was in Derry. I was staying with Mike. Do you know Mike? Is there another Mike?” 

Rich nods seriously and glances to Eddie. “I wonder if… everything was the same for him up to a point? We have the same house, obviously.”

“I’m right here,” Richie mutters, a little annoyed with himself—or this _himself_ that’s external to himself. Annoyed and, very distinctly, jealous. Jealous of the way he and Eddie exchange small knowing glances, of the way every artifact in the house— _their_ house—points to their closeness. Maybe this is a dream, or some way to torture him. Or maybe he’s still in the deadlights, having an extended nightmare-vision. That would certainly explain other… _things_ that happened. He feels another ugly glimmer of hope in his chest, tries to squash it before it can take root. 

Rich looks back at him, pathetic and wrapped in the fluffy afghan. “Sorry. Um. Yes, we have a Mike. And all of them. Bill, Ben, Beverly, Stan.” 

That gets Richie’s attention, and he blurts, “Is your Stan alive, too?” 

Eddie, finally, pulls out a chair to sit at the kitchen table across from Richie, instead of standing over him like a disappointed parent. “What do you mean, ‘too’?” 

_Oh, god_. Richie doesn’t think he can do this. He looks away from Eddie’s huge brown eyes, sad and imploring, and stares at the perfect, glossy surface of the table instead. “Um. My Eddie–” he flinches at himself, a little, for calling him ‘my’ Eddie—Eddie was never his, and he never will be because: “–he died,” he finishes, snapping his mouth shut.

Richie doesn’t glance up, but he can see it in his peripheral vision when Rich and Eddie exchange a look. And he knows that _they_ must know what this means to him. He feels like he’s burning alive, suddenly wants to shrug the blanket off his shoulders. 

“Was it…” Eddie stops and starts again. “What happened? Was it It?” 

Richie nods. He doesn’t want to say, he doesn’t know if he can, but he tries. He’s never verbalized it, he realizes, never had to explain it to someone who wasn’t there when it happened. “Yeah, It fucking skewered you right through–” Richie stops talking because Eddie has leaned back from the table and started unbuttoning his shirt. “Uh,” says Richie. 

Eddie opens his shirt, revealing a pale, marred scar, shiny, hairless skin. It spreads from his breastbone halfway down his abdomen, slightly off-center. Richie stares. 

“You survived that?” Richie asks, his voice trembling. And then he demands it, “You fucking _survived_ that? Did I carry you out? I brought you out of there, and you went to the hospital and you survived?” 

“Hey hey hey.” Rich’s hand is on his shoulder, hovering above him, while Eddie buttons his shirt back up. “It’s okay.” 

“It’s not fucking okay,” Richie snaps, jerking away from the comforting touch. “I wanted to carry him out, and they said– they said it was too late, it wasn’t fucking too late–”

“Okay, okay, we don’t know that, though,” Rich says. Eddie looks pale, staring at the table. “We don’t know what the differences are. You said… your Stan died, too? Was it suicide? Our Stan attempted, but he survived, and that didn’t… That wasn’t anything _you_ did. You know what I mean?” 

Richie nods rapidly, feeling hysterical. His chest hurts with how quick his breath is, and he feels light-headed. “Yeah, yeah. It’s different. Like, um. Well, you two are… together, right? And that’s… I mean.” Richie laughs bitterly. “My Eddie was _married_. To a _woman_. So that’s a big fucking difference right there.” 

The beat of uncomfortable silence stretches on too long. Eddie twists uncomfortably in his seat. 

“Oh, no,” Richie breathes, incredulous. “Don’t fucking tell me.” 

“I was also married,” Eddie admits.

Rich sucks in a breath through his teeth. On a sigh, he mutters, “Maybe we should pace ourselves, he’s gonna throw up again.” 

Richie’s stomach swoops but he doesn’t throw up. “Shit. Okay. I’m… recontextualizing some things. My Eddie might have… he… maybe he _did_ …” 

Rich interrupts, directing his words at Eddie again, “This isn’t helpful, this is just– wallowing–” 

“No, shut up,” Richie says to himself. “I get to fucking wallow, it’s only been a week. I’m allowed to wallow, especially considering this new fucking information that Eddie might have survived and that he might have–” Richie stops talking when he feels a bubble of nausea rise in his throat, putrid. He claps a hand over his mouth, eyes wide. 

“Oh, Jesus,” Rich groans, turning away. “I’ll get a bucket.” 

In Rich’s absence, Eddie fixes Richie with a heartbreakingly earnest gaze. His brows are furrowed at an impossibly steep angle. “God. I… I don’t even know what to say, Richie. I can’t imagine what you’ve been through.” 

When Rich returns, not thirty seconds later, Richie hasn’t thrown up, but he is sobbing, head in his hands, while Eddie awkwardly rubs his back. 

“Oh, man,” Rich mutters, setting a large bowl and glass of water on the table. “I’ll get some Kleenex, one sec.” 

It takes a while for Richie to exhaust himself from sobbing. He hasn’t cried since everything happened, in the quarry with his friends surrounding him. Since then, he’s kept himself carefully closed up. He had enough to deal with, what with the police. He was cleared pretty quickly of any charges around Bowers’ death, but it was still a nightmare. And his manager wouldn’t leave him alone about missing his tour dates in Reno, and then his manager wouldn’t leave him alone about having apparently killed a person. 

So, yeah, Richie hasn’t let it all out in a few days. And there’s a lot to let out. And there’s more now, even, because now Richie has to confront a whole host of what-ifs and could-have-beens. Right when he was beginning to forgive himself for not being able to save Eddie, too. 

That thought shocks a few more sobs out of him, racking up through his shoulders. There are two sets of hands on him, patting and rubbing. Eddie and Rich both murmur comforting noises, and meaningless words that are mostly a mantra of, “Hey, man. Come on. It’s okay,” on repeat.

Finally Richie chokes out his last few sobs and he sits with his head resting on his arms, spread on the kitchen table, for another few seconds. The hands on his back keep patting and rubbing until Richie dries his face and sits up. 

“Alright?” Eddie asks softly, moving away from him. They both give him some space, sitting back in chairs on either side of the table. 

Richie is not alright, but what are you gonna do? He hasn’t felt alright, like, ever. And even less recently. So, he nods. 

“Do you have any… other questions?” Rich asks, crossing his arms. “For us?” 

Richie nods again as he blots his nose with his sleeve. He gets snot on it. Rich brought him a box of Kleenex, but doesn’t seem surprised when Richie doesn’t use it. “Yeah, um. I guess I’ll start with… What year is it?” 

“It’s 2020.” 

“Who’s the president?” 

Eddie answers, “Donald Trump,” through gritted teeth. 

Richie barks a laugh, but neither of them flinch. His palms start to sweat. “But not actually, right?”

“God, I wish I was you,” Rich says, and then winces. “Sorry. But, yes, actually. It’s a whole thing. I don’t want to go into it.” 

Richie stares. “What the _fuck_.” He looks to Eddie and demands, “Is he fucking with me?” because it does seem like a thing he would do. 

Eddie says, “He’s not fucking with you, unfortunately. Like, you can… Google it, but there are probably some other things we should prepare you for first.” 

An hour later, it’s been explained to Richie that there’s apparently a global fucking pandemic and they need to limit their trips outside to only the essentials. Both of them have been working from home for a month now.

Eddie has been spewing information for, like, forty-five minutes, and Richie has only absorbed half of it. He keeps throwing out terms like R-naught and he’s referencing previous epidemics that Richie feels like he should know about, but he doesn’t. Should he remember the avian flu? He hasn’t spared a thought for SARS, probably, ever. Was MERS a thing? 

“I hate the fucking future,” Richie breathes, staring at a map of virus cases that Eddie has pulled up on the New York Times. It looks like an infection, red dots everywhere, denser around the major cities. 

“Yeah, tell me about it,” Rich calls from the couch in the living room. 

At the very least, all this horrifying information has taken Richie’s attention off of his own horrors, so. That’s something. 

It’s not immediately apparent what to _do_ about this situation. There’s some unspoken hope that maybe if Richie goes back to sleep, he’ll wake up back in his own timeline, his own universe, and this will all be like a weird dream. It might be a weird dream, anyway; throughout the day, Richie has been remembering in flashes the dream he had before he woke up this morning. 

He remembered the sound and the feeling first. It was a murky, rumbling sound, like when you hold your head underwater. But he could breathe, and, although his lungs felt heavy, it was pure air. Then he looked up and he saw something like the shape of a giant sea turtle swimming or floating above him. The shadow flickered across the ground, the light warped as if through a prism. It was a strange dream, like nothing he’d experienced before in its vividness. 

So, that night, they set him up in the guest room, and Richie goes to sleep, expecting to wake up in Derry. 

He doesn’t. 

After that, they run out of ideas pretty quickly. If Richie can’t sleep it off, what else is there to do? Especially when they can’t go anywhere. So, basically, Richie lives with them now. He sleeps in the guest room and he helps cook dinner and clean up. He spends his time catching up on TV and movies from the past four years. 

“I guess Game of Thrones must be done now,” he realizes aloud one day, shooting a look at Rich.

Rich just rolls his eyes. “Yeah, buddy, you might want to skip that one.”

Richie watches all of it anyway and then spends a good two hours yelling his complaints with Rich. It’s okay, sometimes, having yourself around. They agree on a lot of things. 

Other times, Richie realizes how fucking annoying he is when he gets a song stuck in his head and he won’t stop humming it or when he’s in a bright, cheery mood and he bulldozes over any subtler, darker feelings in his vicinity. 

This happens a lot. Richie will be sulking in his room, wondering if this is his life now, doomed to live with a vision of perfect happiness that he will never have— and then Rich, that perfect happiness incarnate, will bust down his door to say something like: “Hey, hey, Richie, I’m gonna Skype into the Late Show tonight, and I was thinking. We should do a bit. Like, we should have both of us on-screen. They’ll think it’s special effects. It could be really funny.”

Richie stared back at his stupid, grinning, creased face. “Uh, no thanks.” 

Rich’s smile faltered, but he said, “Okey-dokey,” and closed the door and bounded off to find Eddie instead. 

Eddie, who loves Rich, evidently, who married him, who shares a bed with him every night. Richie spends a lot of time thinking about _that_ , too. He thinks sometimes about sneaking down the hallway to the door to their bedroom, at night, to stand outside the door and see if he could hear anything. It’s a thought that fills him instantly with shame, but the longer he’s here, the more the shame abates, overwhelmed by desire. 

There’s an Eddie in the world—this world—who loves him and is attracted to him and has sex with him. (With him! Richie!)

He never thought that was possible, especially when he saw Eddie again. He thought the best he would ever get is a friend that he could cling to a little too tightly, and who might cling back, but would never acknowledge the reason why they were so close. And that was, actually, fine with Richie. Having Eddie here, loving and being attracted to _him_ —basically him, literally another Richie—but not being able to have him… It hurts worse. The possibility makes the loss sting more acutely. Losing something that he could have never had wasn’t really a loss, was it? 

And Eddie, the memory of his Eddie, is fading fast. Did he really lose him? This Eddie is the same in every way, just a few years down the line. It’s all very confusing. Richie puts his healing process on hold a little. He can continue the painful work of grieving Eddie when it’s clear that he needs to. For now, who knows what the fuck is going on. 

One morning, Richie sits at the kitchen table sipping coffee and trying hard not to stare at Eddie too much, who sits across from him, doing the same. Rich is still sleeping, and Richie almost wishes he were here. Things get kind of weird when it’s just Richie and Eddie alone. It doesn’t happen often. Richie finds himself struggling to even look at Eddie, but when he can bring himself to steal a glance, it’s even harder to look away. 

“Getting kinda shaggy there?” Eddie says, startling Richie out of his thoughts.

He glances up, wide-eyed. He realizes he was pulling at the curls around his ears, unconscious nervous fidgeting. 

“Do you want a trim?” Eddie asks, leaning forward a bit. His eyebrows furrow, forehead wrinkling in that absurdly expressive way it does. “I cut his hair. Richie’s. I’m pretty good at it. Even before all of this.” 

“Um.” Richie swallows hard, his eyes still stuck on Eddie’s forehead, the perfect rectangle of his hairline. “Sure.” 

They end up in the guest bathroom, the one that Richie uses. The other bathroom is an en suite, attached the master bedroom, and Richie hasn’t been in there, but he knows it’s there since it’s his house, after all. He knows there are two sinks, side by side. He only ever needed the one. He’s been picturing Rich and Eddie brushing their teeth or shaving in sync, standing close together. 

In the guest bathroom, Richie sits on the closed toilet, a towel draped over his shoulders. It’s bright in here, the lights doubling off the mirror, but the light is warm, not harsh. Richie’s still not showered this morning, and his hair is a little greasy which he doesn’t feel self-conscious about until Eddie starts carding his fingers through his curls to get a sense of the length. He reaches for the sink to wet his hands and does the same thing again, dampening Richie’s hair. The water’s a little cold and Richie shivers as it drips down his neck. 

“Just a little touch-up,” Eddie says softly. “Not as short as his. Unless that’s what you want?”

Richie doesn’t say anything at first, lost in the feeling of hands in his hair, the tingle down his spine. 

“Hmm?” Eddie prompts again, ceasing his movement. 

“Um.” Richie clears his throat and meets Eddie’s eyes in the mirror. “Uh, yeah, no. Not that short. Just… a…” 

Eddie smiles, so calm and confident, and goes back to massaging his skull. “Got it. I’ll just freshen you up.”

He starts to, using long sharp silver-handled scissors. He tosses scraps of wet dark hair into the trash bin. Richie gives into the rhythm of Eddie’s ministrations, rocking slightly forward and back and letting Eddie tilt his head this way and that. His eyes slip shut and he listens to the the snip of the scissors, and Eddie’s breathing and thoughtful hums. Soon, Eddie comes around to kneel in front of Richie and, with two fingers placed under his jaw, coaxes him to tilt his face up. 

“Just seeing if I need to…” Eddie tugs on strands of hair on either side of Richie’s head and then his dimpled frown deepens. “Ah.” He rises into a crouch—Richie holds his breath—and trims a little more off the left side. 

Then there’s a voice from the threshold of the open door which startles them both. 

“You’re a cruel man, Eds.” 

They both glance over to see Rich leaning against the doorframe. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Eddie says calmly, turning back to continue his work. 

“Yeah, you do.” Rich takes a step inside to lean against the counter, obscuring Richie’s view of the mirror. “He loves how responsive you are,” he says to Richie. “How you look at him.” 

“Rich,” Eddie says, his voice tense. He’s staring resolutely past Richie’s shoulder, left hand still gripped in his hair, the other holding the scissors. 

“It takes you back, right?” Rich says, still pushing, his voice amplified by the bare walls and tile floor. “When we first got together?” 

“How did it happen?” Richie blurts. Eddie’s fingers tighten in his hair a bit. 

“You want to hear about it?” Rich asks. He doesn’t sound like he’s teasing anymore; he sounds a little caught off guard. 

“Yeah, I’ve been wondering,” Richie says. “How you two got together.” 

So they tell the story, while Eddie finishes up the haircut. They takes turns in the retelling, going back and forth and arguing about some details, laughing at the reminiscences. The gist of it is: Eddie had a long slow recovery from his injury. The divorce was less painfully drawn out but equally exhausting. Eddie actually came out first, telling the rest of the Losers that he’s gay while he was still in the hospital in Bangor—“Stole my thunder,” Rich says, rolling his eyes fondly. The two of them stayed in touch when they each had to go home, and they grew closer, talking every day. 

“I was already gone for him,” Rich says, scoffing a bit. “Like, right from the start, it was over for me. Took him a little longer to come around.”

“Not really, I just…” Eddie sighs. His hands are still in Richie’s hair. He’s really taking his time with the haircut, snipping off ever-smaller bits of hair. Not that Richie’s going to complain or tell him to hurry up. He leans back a bit until his shoulders bump into Eddie’s thighs and stays there, warmed by the contact. “It took me a while to really be conscious of it, I guess,” Eddie says, his voice soft. “I thought, yeah, I think about Richie all the time and I can’t go a day without talking to him and whenever we FaceTime I feel all warm and can’t stop smiling but that’s… normal friend feelings, right?” 

Richie’s started to tear up, listening to Eddie’s gently self-deprecating voice. It makes his heart ache, the thought that it could’ve happened like this, without anything big and dramatic, just the slow daily grind of getting closer, falling in love. It’s all so _normal_. Richie sniffs, raising his wrist to rub his nose on his sleeve. 

That gets Rich’s attention, sympathetic gaze falling on him. “I eventually told him,” he says. “I’m not even sure what pushed me over the edge. I think it just started feeling less… scary. After a time.”

Richie lets out a shaky breath. God, wouldn’t that be something? For it to feel less scary one day. Maybe he’ll get there, even if it’s on his own. 

Eddie’s hands fall on his shoulders, rubbing comforting little circles. “I think that’s a wrap on the haircut.” 

They watch a movie later that night, the three of them on the couch together, Eddie sat in the middle. There’s not a lot of space, but there’s enough that Richie doesn’t strictly need to sit with his thigh pressed up against Eddie’s. Eddie doesn’t shift away from him though. Maybe Richie’s being thrown a bone out of pity or worse maybe Eddie doesn’t think it’s a big deal at all. Either way, Richie’s going to take whatever scraps are given to him. That’s always been his way. 

One afternoon, while Richie sits at the kitchen table with Rich, Eddie emerges from his home office wearing his Zoom call get-up—which is a starched button-up and tie with only boxer-briefs on the bottom. As if Richie didn’t have enough to deal with. 

Richie steals a couple glances as Eddie saunters through the kitchen, throwing each of them a smile. Eddie parks in front of the open fridge to consider lunch; his hairy calves flex as he locks his knees. The dimples of his hips are visible through the tight black fabric. Richie’s mouth is watering. 

Then Rich says, “Okay, okay. I see how it is.” He gets up from the table and presses up behind Eddie, hands on his hips. “You got two Richies drooling over you. Are you proud of yourself? This is your dream, isn’t it?” 

“Hey,” Eddie laughs, good-naturedly squirming away. “I’m trying to get lunch.”

“Oh, uh huh,” Rich says in a low voice. He nuzzles at Eddie’s neck. “Are you on your lunch break?”

Richie stares at the kitchen table, his favorite pastime, apparently. They haven’t touched in front of him that much, and he can’t help but feel it’s purposeful. They don’t want to rub it in, or whatever. Or it’s awkward. 

It _is_ awkward.

But it’s also…

Richie shifts in his seat, willing his blood flow to reverse direction. 

“Hey, come on, Rich,” Eddie says quietly, more firmly, not joking anymore. “Not in front of…”

Richie’s skin flushes hot then cold, prickling shame. He glances up to find both sets of eyes on him. Eddie looks embarrassed, pink-cheeked. Rich is still crowding him against the open fridge, smirking.

“No, um, it’s okay,” Richie says as casually as he can. “You can… act normal. Don’t worry about me.” 

Eddie stares for another moment before he turns away from the fridge, twisting out of Rich’s arms. “I can’t,” he mutters, throwing his hands up, “I can’t do this, it’s fucking weird.” He retreats back down the hall to his office without getting lunch. 

The two Richies look at each other in the following silence. Richie feels vivisected, ripped open, his heart still beating rabbit-fast in his chest. Rich must know how he feels, of course he does, but Eddie… Have they spoken about him privately? They must have. In their room alone at night, while they fall asleep, whispering about this other Richie. What did they say? Obviously, it makes Eddie uncomfortable. 

Finally, Rich says, “So, that was probably a dick move, on my part.” 

He looks contrite, but barely. Richie recognizes the sincerity, though. “It is hard to see you,” he admits. “What I might have been.”

“Right back at you,” Rich says. He grabs a can of Diet Coke from the fridge before, finally, shutting the door. The energy-efficiency alarm has been dinging for minutes, Richie realizes only in its absence. 

“What do you mean?” 

Rich leans against the kitchen counter and cracks open his Diet Coke. “Well, like. A version of me that… lost him. I just… we came close, you know? I thought… I _almost_ ended up where you are. I almost lost him, and I…” Rich’s breath shudders, his eyes shining behind his glasses. “I hate to think about it.” 

Richie nods, understanding. He feels sort of detached from the emotion that Rich is showing; he can’t quite grasp onto it, or return it. “It hardly feels real to me anymore,” he says. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s not. Maybe none of this is.” 

Rich nods, his eyes wide. Richie can tell he’s zoning out, lost in thought; probably having the same thoughts Richie has been dealing with. If this is all a dream or some weird limbo, or worse, some Pennywise trick to torture them a while longer. _Hell is other people_ , and everything. If he ever thought Richie and Eddie were perfectly created to torment each other, maybe it’s nothing compared to two Richies and an Eddie. He’s about to make the Sartre reference to Rich, knowing it will be fully appreciated, but before he can—

Rich blinks a couple times and glances up again with newfound resolved. “Maybe the three of us need to talk, you know? You might be here for… a long time. I don’t know how this kind of thing works. And it doesn’t help that we can’t fucking go outside. But I’m sure we can work something out for all of us.” 

Richie agrees, but he’s not sure exactly what that means.

Scheduling a time to sit down and talk when they all live in the same house and have nowhere else to go should be an easy task. Somehow it still takes a couple days to work their way up to it. It’s a Friday and Eddie knocked off of work around three that afternoon. After dinner, they sit down in the living room, Rich and Eddie on the couch, Richie on the adjacent chair. 

It’s quiet for a moment, Richie’s pulse thrumming in his ears because he’s still not sure what to expect from this little rendezvous. 

Eddie starts, hands folded in his lap and glancing at Rich unsurely as he says, “I think, um, where we’re coming from is, we want to make sure that you’re doing okay. Emotionally? Or as well as you can, I guess. And if there’s anything that we can do to, uh… help…”

Eddie seems like he’s in physical pain. Rich cuts him off. “I know this whole thing is kind of weird and sad, but I was also thinking… what if we had sex? All three of us.”

Richie stares back, his jaw slack. “Um. What?”

Rich shrugs, ridiculously. “I dunno. Just a crazy pitch.”

“I don’t think this is going to help,” Eddie rushes to say. “Isn’t this just going to make it worse?”

 _Oh_ , Richie realizes. The two of them have previously discussed this. And Eddie sounds… on-the-fence. Not adamantly opposed to it. Eddie is considering having sex with him, with Richie. 

The way Richie sees it, there are two possible outcomes. One is that he eventually goes back to his own timeline, and he’ll lose Eddie forever—again. Will knowing what Eddie feels like, tastes like, what he sounds like—will that really make it worse? His gut floods with heat at the mere thought of getting to know Eddie like this, even if it’s only one time. It might be worse not to know, actually, knowing that he had the chance. He’s getting the chance, right now. 

The other possibility is that Richie never goes back. And that’s still difficult to come to terms with, so he can’t fully accept it. Because what the fuck would that future look like, anyway? Would the three of them just enter some kind of weird threeway thing? That’d probably be better than Richie being alone forever. 

But he doesn’t really know this Eddie, not in the way that he wants to. The two of them have years of history together, real history, that Richie will never be a part of. 

“I mean,” Rich says, snapping Richie out of his own thoughts. “There’s also the chance that there’s some weird sex magic thing going on and that’ll send you back? Right?” 

Eddie groans, rolling his eyes. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Does anyone have any better ideas?” 

They argue for another few seconds, back and forth, turned toward each other on the couch, until Richie interrupts them.

“Okay.” 

Both their heads snap back to look at Richie, mouths hanging open in mid-argument. The effect is almost comical. “Okay?” Rich repeats.

“Yeah, I mean… It’s not a bad idea.” Richie feels like he’s about to float out of his body. This doesn’t feel all that real, and he doesn’t feel very grounded in his sensations or emotions. So, fuck it, he figures. Why not? What the fuck does he have to lose? “It sort of makes sense, in a… narrative closure way, I guess. If Eddie and I…” 

Eddie flushes bright red. 

“Okay,” Rich says with an incredulous laugh. “Cool. So, uh… wanna do this… now?”

They agree to regroup in the bedroom. In the intervening few minutes, Richie locks himself into the guest bathroom and stares at his own face in the mirror, breathing deeply. This is all pretty fucking weird, true, but that hasn’t stopped him from already going a bit hard in his pants. He splashes his face with cold water, hands shaking, and then goes to the bedroom. 

He hasn’t been in here since he woke up that first morning, weeks ago. 

Rich and Eddie sit on the edge of the king size bed, both of them already stripped down to t-shirts and boxers. Richie pauses in the threshold, returning their uneasy smiles. 

“Fuck, this is weird,” Eddie says on a breathy laugh. 

“Yeah,” Richie agrees, taking a couple steps closer. It’s a relief to have someone else acknowledge it, especially Eddie. It sets him slightly more at ease. 

“Let’s just, um–” Rich turns toward Eddie, cupping his hand around his jaw to tilt his face toward him. And he kisses him, slowly at first. The familiarity between them is immediately evident, the way their breathing fall into the sync, the soft smack as their lips part. Eddie runs his hand up Rich’s arm to hold onto him. Richie watches, transfixed, his own breathing deep, unconsciously matching it to theirs, as he drifts closer to the bed. 

When Rich pulls back, he turns to Richie who’s now standing in front of them, and wordlessly reaches to pull him into bed. Richie goes without resistance, falling onto his knees into bed, and collides into a kiss with himself. 

It’s strange, kissing Rich, but not bad. Rich kisses with the confidence that Richie lacks, licking at his teeth and sweeping his thumbs over his stubbled cheeks. 

Richie is not inexperienced. He almost got married once, even, to a woman. But with men… he’s never slept with the same man more than a handful of times, never enough to really make it _good_. It was fine, though, the flings he had with men still in many ways more satisfying than the sex he had with his once-fiancee Sandy, which was practiced but unimpassioned. Richie really wanted sex with men, and his body reacted to it in a way that sort of scared him, made him understand how people—mostly other men, in his honest observation—always seemed to do idiotic things for sex. How was it possible they wanted it that much? 

Turns out Richie’s no different, he’d just buried it a little deeper. 

Those layers peel back pretty quickly as soon as he gets a taste of it. Richie feels Eddie’s hand smoothing up his back, fingers curling around his shoulder, and he pulls back from Rich with a gasp that Eddie swallows as soon as he surges forward to kiss him. 

Kissing Eddie is strange and really, really good. Richie groans involuntarily into his mouth and holds his face in both hands, feeling the line of his sharp narrow jaw and the rough sandpapery drag of his stubbled skin. Eddie’s hands are hot around the back of his neck and running flat over his chest. Another set of hands, Rich’s, start tugging up the hem of Richie’s t-shirt, managing to pull it almost all the way off before Richie has to break the kiss for a moment to get it off around his head. 

Pulling away for a second, Richie sees that Eddie’s eyes are heavily lidded, wide dark pupils, lips wet and red. The sight makes Richie’s stomach swoop in an almost nauseating jolt of arousal. He surges forward to kiss Eddie again, and now Eddie’s hands skate over his bare skin, ruffling the hair on his chest and tracing his collarbones. 

Rich intervenes to pull them down slowly until they’re both lying flat on the bed, still kissing, Richie lying between the two of them. 

“This is so hot,” Rich says quietly. His breathing is as heavy as the two of theirs. “Like a live sex tape.” 

Eddie snorts, laughing a little, his breath hot against Richie’s face, and cool on his wet lips. “Yeah, you got what you wanted, huh?”

“Like you’re not,” Rich mutters wryly. 

Richie’s head is spinning too much to really engage in the banter. His heart is pounding and he’s completely out of breath. He can feel his pulse in his dick, painfully hard under the layers of his jeans and underwear, not having received any real attention yet. His legs are intertwined with Eddie’s, but their hips are not quite pressed together. Richie’s gathering the courage to grind them together because he can see the bulge in Eddie’s thin underwear and he wants to feel it more than anything. 

Then Eddie’s hand is firm on the side of his face, directing him into eye contact. “Hey, Richie,” he says softly. “Are you okay?”

Richie nods blearily. “Yeah, I’m okay, s’just… intense.” 

Eddie gives him a sympathetic smile-frown, his trademark expression. “We can stop if you want, or take it slower. Or try another time.” 

Richie really doesn’t want to stop. 

“I really don’t want to stop,” he says, skimming his hands down until they rest on Eddie’s hips, fingers on the bare skin where his shirt rides up. He tugs Eddie closer to him until they collide and drags their cocks together, watching while Eddie’s head tips back, his eyes fluttering shut. 

“Fuck, Richie,” he breathes, and Richie does it again, grinding against him. 

“Wow, okay,” Rich mutters behind him, then springs up to kneel over them. He leans down to plant a kiss first on Eddie’s lips then on Richie’s, then he bounces off the bed to rifle through the bedside table drawer. 

Richie hears him rummaging around behind him, but he focuses on the short circles of Eddie’s hips and the way his adam’s apple bobs when he swallows. 

The mattress shifts when Rich slides back into bed. He presses up behind Richie, and it’s immediately apparent he’s lost a few more articles of clothing. His fingers tug on one of the belt loops of Richie’s jeans. 

“So,” Rich says, quietly, pressing his lips to Richie’s shoulder. “If you’re anything like me, you’ve never been fucked before, but you really want it, and you’re _really_ gonna like it.” 

That knocks the breath out of Richie a little. “Fuck,” he wheezes, leaning forward to rest his head on Eddie’s chest. 

“Is that a yes?” Rich asks, laughing a little. “I think that’s a yes, what do you think, Eds? You wanna fuck him?” 

Eddie’s hand twists into the hair at the nape of Richie’s neck as he presses his lips to the top of his head. “Yeah, whatever he wants. You know I love fucking you.” 

Feeling like he’s been set on fire, Richie rears back with sudden resolve, fumbling for the button of his jeans. 

Rich laughs gently at him. “That’s definitely a yes.” 

Between the three of them, they lose the rest of their clothes, and Richie lets them manhandle him into Eddie’s lap, kneeling across his hips. Eddie is beautiful, like Richie knew he would be. The slope of his shoulders, the sparse dark hair around his nipples and below his bellybutton, thickening around his groin into a nest of curls. His cock rises, long and curved toward his stomach. Richie ducks his head to kiss the edge of the scar that starts below his breastbone, at the same time that he fists his hand around Eddie’s cock, giving a few gentle tugs and spreading the precome that beads at the head down with his palm. 

It makes Richie more emotional than he really bargained for, touching Eddie, kissing his scarred skin. A lump rises in his throat and he’s trembling a little as he moves his lips up Eddie’s chest. 

“You didn’t die,” he whispers. “You survived, you’re right here.”

“I’m right here, Rich,” Eddie says just as quietly, fingers knotted in the hair at the back of his head, and Richie tears up at the nickname. He always liked it when Eddie called him Rich. 

Behind him, other-Richie, the one who Eddie’s exclusively been calling Rich for weeks, opens a bottle of lube. “I’m gonna finger you open now, alright?”

He makes quick work of it, too, while Richie stays in Eddie’s lap, kissing him, gasping when Rich crooks his fingers. It’s weird because he’s fingered himself plenty of times, but the angle is different, allowing him to get much deeper. Rich holds him still with one hand on his hip, his own erection rubbing against his thigh, and thrusts in with two fingers, pausing only to stretch his fingers apart or dribble in more lube. Richie keeps his face buried in the crook of Eddie’s neck, while Eddie strokes his cock long and slow, murmuring against his ear, “You’re doing so well, we’re gonna make you feel so good, Richie.” 

“I think you’re ready,” Rich says, pulling his fingers out, and he passes off the lube to Eddie. 

Once he’s slicked down, Richie sits back in Eddie’s lap to sink down slowly on his cock, closing his eyes to savor the stretch and burn that sends heat shooting down to the tips of his toes. Then Eddie’s hand is on his face, and he says, “Look at me, Richie.” 

Richie’s eyes fly open on command, locking onto Eddie’s, dark and wide, staring up at him from under furrowed brows. Richie whines a little, involuntarily in the back of his throat, suddenly overwhelmed, as he scrambles to grab Eddie’s hand. 

Eddie clutches back at him, anchoring him. “I’ve got you, Richie.” 

Richie sinks down farther, his skin almost unbearably warm now, the flush on his cheeks having spread down his neck and onto his chest. Eddie brings Richie’s hand up to his mouth to kiss his knuckles, and he shifts under him, angling his hips up to slide in a bit farther until Richie is fully seated. They both exhale, Eddie’s eyes fluttering shut for a moment as he runs his other hand up Richie’s thigh to rest on his hip. 

“Feels good, huh?” Rich says. He’s kneeling behind Richie, pressing in closer until he can run a hand down Richie’s chest to circle fingers around his dick. “I think I like this better, if I had to choose. What do you think, Eds? I know you like taking it, too, but you’re so good at this.” 

Eddie starts to move then, fucking up slowly from the bottom, more of a torturous slow grind at first, his knees bent and feet planted on the mattress for leverage. He smiles but he’s already panting slightly, flushed. “I like this.” 

“Oh, yeah?” Rich says with a little laugh. “You like this?” 

“It’s alright,” Eddie says before getting in a sharp thrust up that knocks Richie’s breath out of him. 

Rich starts to stroke him then, slow but tight, and with his other hand coaxes Richie forward and back to rock on Eddie’s dick. “You got to be our first twice, huh?” Rich says in a low voice, directed at Eddie. “Lucky man. He loves us so much, you know,” he says, close to Richie’s ear. “Eddie, Eddie tell him.” 

Eddie meets Richie’s eyes, gives him that familiar sincere, sympathetic look as he says, “I love you so much, Richie. I want to make you feel good.” He pauses, gauging Richie’s reaction, before he adds, “He loved you, too, he wanted to tell you.” 

Richie’s never cried during sex before, never really understood that reaction to be honest, but this is something else. He feels so overwhelmed and choked with emotion, to the point where every exhale comes out like a sob. He collapses forward a little, braced on his elbows over Eddie, so he can bury his face into the crook of his neck, wetting his skin and the pillow with tears. Eddie keeps fucking into him, and Richie’s cock rubs in the sweaty space between their bodies, and it’s almost enough. 

“I loved him so much,” Richie sobs into the pillow, saying it out loud for the first time. He’s known it, he’s thought it to himself, but saying it feels different, it feels real and outside of himself for the first time. Saying it out loud carves a hole open in his chest so it can escape, and it feels like pain and relief. 

“I know,” Eddie says, his voice as shot through with emotion as Richie’s. He strokes the back of Richie’s neck, a comforting and grounding touch. “He knew, too, he knew.” 

Richie lifts up slightly to fit a hand between them, because he _needs_ to come, the desperation hitting him all at once. He sobs in relief when he finally gets a hand around himself and in a couple short strokes he’s coming onto Eddie’s stomach, clenching around him. 

“Ah– fuck, _Richie_ ,” Eddie gasps, thighs tensing as he jerks up a few more times before he spills over too, into Richie’s body. 

There’s a moment where they’re catching their breaths, chests stuck together, Eddie’s slowing breath hot on the side of Richie’s face. He presses a kiss to Richie’s cheekbone and shifts his hips so he slips out. Richie’s collapsed more fully on top of Eddie at this point, his knees and elbows no longer really supporting his weight, but Eddie doesn’t seem uncomfortable. He doesn’t say anything, anyway. 

Richie can feel Eddie’s come starting to slip down over his balls and onto his inner thighs, and it feels weirdly like losing something. 

Then the calm, quiet moment ends when Rich, all but forgotten behind them, leans forward over Richie. He pulls Eddie into a kiss, the lazy wet sounds playing directly into Richie’s ear, and he says in between kisses and breaths, “Holy _shit_ – That was really– I’m just gonna–” 

Rich pulls back from Eddie, smoothing a hand over Richie’s sweaty back. “Are you good?” he asks him. 

Richie nods and hums, feeling more exhausted than he ever has in his life, in a real bone-deep way. His eyes have drifted shut. 

“Good,” Rich says, softer than he has been the whole time, really, no teasing edge left to his voice. “I wanted you to have that.” 

He runs his hand down farther over Richie’s back to the curve of his ass, slowly, until his thumb dips in to catch on his rim. Richie keens a little, tilting his hips backward, and Rich responds by trailing his thumb through Eddie’s leaking come to push it back into his hole. 

“Fuck,” Richie breathes, turning his head to nuzzle into Eddie’s neck.

Then Rich leans in to lick around his thumb, his tongue hot against Richie’s skin, cleaning him up. Richie’s lax body can’t even tense at the surprising sensation and filthy sounds, so he just lies there, draped over Eddie, whimpering quietly. Richie’s still cognizant enough to notice the slick sounds and heavy breathing as Rich finishes himself off, soon pulling back to come over Richie’s ass and lower back, groaning low as he does. 

Richie’s soft cock twitches against Eddie’s abdomen at that, but he doesn’t really have the bandwidth to process where on the narcissism scale it lies to find one’s own orgasm sounds hot. 

“I can see why you like doing that so much,” Rich says to Eddie when he finally lands heavy on the mattress next to them. 

Richie whines brokenly into the pillows. As if he wasn’t overwhelmed enough, he now has some particular mental images emblazoned into his brain. 

Rich pokes his side, the smug grin evident in his voice when he says, “Yeah, he loves eating me out.”

Eddie laughs softly, breathy and clearly just as exhausted as Richie. He shifts under his weight, patting his back. “Roll off me a little.” 

Richie does, just a bit, still half-on top of him, but taking most of his weight off. 

“When’s the sex magic supposed to kick in?” Richie mumbles, cheek pressed against Eddie’s chest, his eyes closed. 

Rich laughs, curling up on the other side of Eddie. “I don’t know, I think that was pretty magical, though.”

In another moment, Richie drifts to sleep with his limbs still thrown over Eddie’s body.

* * *

When Richie wakes up, he’s on Mike’s pullout couch in his home in Derry and he feels hungover.

He can’t say he’s surprised when he opens his eyes to the blurry sight of the popcorn ceiling and rolls over to see the ugly floral pattern of the couch, the arm of which is sun-bleached from sitting next to the window for years. 

He holds his breath for a quiet moment, and he knows that Eddie is still dead. He knows it without needing any other evidence, and he’s sure he always will carry it with him, like a phantom limb. 

He feels better, in some ways—and worse. Raw, ripped open in the way he hasn’t since the quarry, when he broke down in front of his friends. Maybe that’s good, to feel it. He’ll have to, sooner or later. 

When Mike emerges from his bedroom, Richie is still lying there, staring blankly at the ceiling. 

“Hey,” Mike greets him cautiously. His tone isn’t different from any other morning, but Richie finds he missed it. Mike who doesn’t push him to talk, but who will always listen. Mike who will try to cheer him up but always gently. 

Richie could cry just hearing his voice. He sits up and stares at Mike for a moment and Mike stares back, eyes wide. He seems a little scared of Richie sometimes, but he hides it well. 

“I wanna show you something,” Richie says. 

At the Kissing Bridge, Richie steps out of Mike’s car, already flipping out the blade of his penknife. The engine shuts off behind him and he hears the crunch of Mike’s boots in the gravel while Richie crouches down in front of the worn graffitied planks of wood. It only takes him a second to find his own handiwork, the large straight-edged initials, faded and infringed upon by other lovers over the years. 

Richie starts to trace over the letters again, carving them in deeper, until a fresh, lighter shade of wood is revealed, not as weather-beaten. 

He says to Mike, who’s standing silently above him, “I loved him. As much as I could have, at that age. And as much as I could have my whole life, without really remembering him.”

Mike’s quiet for a moment. The gravel crunches as he takes a shuffling step closer and his hand lands heavily on Richie’s shoulder. “Oh, Richie, I’m so sorry,” Mike says. “I think I knew? I think I could tell. At least, this time.”

“And…” Richie shudders and twists around to face him, squinting up into the morning sun. He pushes the words out and it feels like thorns coming up his throat. “He loved me, too. You know?” His voice cracks with emotion at the end, breaking into a higher pitch. 

Mike looks heartbroken. “Yeah, of course he did.” He sinks to his knees to pull Richie into a crushing hug, and Richie goes easily, happily, folding into him. “Of course he did,” Mike says. “He loved you so much.”

Richie lets Mike hold him for a long time, until they’re rocking slightly back and forth, and until his legs are cramped to hell and he knows that standing up again is going to hurt. 

“I think I’m ready to go home,” Richie says, muffled into his shoulder. He starts to pull back and Mike lets him, loosening his arms. 

“You know you can stay as long as you–”

“No, I’m ready,” Richie says definitively, cutting Mike off. “I know you wanna get out of here, too.”

Mike smiles a little. “Maybe we can road trip it together? Head west?”

Richie smiles back. “That sounds good.” 

He finally gets to his feet, and his shitty knees make a fuss about it, but he needed to stand back up. He slides into the passenger seat of Mike’s car and Mike makes a u-turn to head away from the river and back toward town.

**Author's Note:**

> (coming soon: follow-up fic in which Richie, back in 2016, is a prophet and gets the US government to take pandemic preparation seriously. (somehow.) thank you, king.)


End file.
